Many medical procedures require injecting a fluid into a patient using a syringe. In particular, medical fluid injection systems, such as a CT injector uses one or more syringes to inject a measured amount of a fluid into a patient. Before the syringes can be used to inject a fluid, they must first be filled with a fluid. In some instances, filling a syringe may be inexact, inconvenient, and inflexible.
One method of obtaining a loaded syringe is to purchase a syringe that has been pre-loaded with the desired fluid. However, this method has several disadvantages. First, pre-loaded syringes having the desired fluid may not be readily available. Second, if the syringe is available, it may not have the desired amount of fluid. For these and other reasons, pre-loaded syringes may not be desirable.
An alternative method of filling syringes involve connecting an empty syringe to a supply reservoir via a tubing. The syringe plunger is manually withdrawn from the syringe barrel. As the plunger is withdrawn, fluid within the reservoir is drawn into the syringe. This method provides greater flexibility in fluid type and in the amount to be pre-loaded in the syringe. Here, the operator must “eye-ball’ the amount of fluid that has entered the syringe to determine when a desired amount of fluid has been transferred to the syringe. Here, the accuracy of the fluid being transferred is dependant on the skill and care of the operator. Additionally, it may be difficult to completely fill the syringe because of air trapped in the tubing. It may also be difficult in forming a necessary vacuum to draw fluid into the syringe. Further, mutually drawing fluid into the barrel may afford the possibility of contamination inside the syringe because the entire reservoir is not utilized to fill the syringe.